From the ArcaMax Publishing, Bible Verses Newsletter:
http://www.arcamax.com/news/bibleverses/s-564645-712758
Christ lives in me
We Jews know that we have no advantage of birth over "non-Jewish
sinners." We know very well that we are not set right with God by
rule-keeping but only through personal faith in Jesus Christ. How do
we know? We tried it - and we had the best system of rules the world
has ever seen! Convinced that no human being can please God by
self-improvement, we believed in Jesus as the Messiah so that we might
be set right before God by trusting in the Messiah, not by trying to
be good.
Have some of you noticed that we are not yet perfect? (No great
surprise, right?) And are you ready to make the accusation that since
people like me, who go through Christ in order to get things right
with God, aren't perfectly virtuous, Christ must therefore be an
accessory to sin? The accusation is frivolous. If I was "trying to be
good," I would be rebuilding the same old barn that I tore down. I
would be acting as a charlatan.
What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my
head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law
man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and
enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed,
I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is
no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your
good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives
in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by
faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am
not going to go back on that. Is it not clear to you that to go back
to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an
abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with
God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living
relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died
unnecessarily.
Galatians 2:15-21 The Message